SpeedofLite 

georges1

That is very interesting but often the columbus sl or slx frames I see for sale are overpriced and heavier than their reynolds 531c or 531 professional counterparts, whereas for tange prestige their tubes have a bad tendancy to rust over time. How Tange Prestige would have compared to an El OS or 753 , that is a good question. Tange was very popular in the mid 80's till early 90's. Since the mid 90's very very few brands if none uses Tange same for frame builders. One example of a nice Tange Prestige frame for sale 55 x 54 cm Tange Prestige Fillet Brazed Frame by Performance w/ SR Alloy Fork at 2471gr with frame and fork, it is indeed a light frame. Another nice Tange Prestige frame for sale Rare 1997 Ritchey Road Logic bike frame Size 54cm, Tange Prestige Tom Ritchey . Besides Ritchey uses steel Nitanium tubing (Tange Prestige) for their frames, no other framebuilder does.

seedsbelize2

I've never ridden Columbus SL but I have an old Trek 930 built of full SP. And a Paramount built with Tange Prestige. I ride the Paramount more, because of the stiffer feel to the frame. And its lighter feel as well. I've never ridden a bike that cuts through a headwind better than that Paramount. My third rider is a Trek 414 built with Ishiwata 022 main triangle only. I bought this bike specifically to compare the Ishiwata tubing to the Columbus. And it's not a fair comparison because the Ishiwata bike has hi ten fork and stays. It is still a lovely ride, though not quite as smooth (or as noodly) as the full SP frame. My 2 cents.
Edit: I should qualify this opinion by stating that I live and ride in the flatlands, and that I ride like the old man that I am. No climbing, no high speed descents, no tight corners, etc.

TiHabanero

Yet to ride an SL frame that I didn't like. Great frames use great tubing. Put my brother's 79 Raleigh Professional made from 531 up against my friends Oschner SL. Both frames measured out the same for size. I don't know about frame angles or tube lengths, however both fit me well.
The SL frame felt better, the 531 frame felt great, just not as great as the SL frame. As for performance, there was no difference in sprinting, climbing, or sustained effort, and under those conditions I was unable to "feel" the difference in frames, it was only when riding for observation that I honed in on the "feel" differences between the two bikes.
Conclusion: there is too much ado about nothing.

Mr. 66

I have Performance with Tange Prestige with alloy fork. I don't know about the one in the link posted but the one I have is tig welded. I do think that it is rather snappy compared to the Columbus SL. I do wish to try the same Tange frame with a fork of prestige to really find out the difference. The alloy fork does not absorb like the various steels.

repechage

Substituting wall thickness... easy on a custom frame but only on bespoke.

I will note that Tange tubing is "out the box" straighter- Columbus has to be evaluated - a slight bow is common- one sets it aside or places it to not veer left or right.

plonz 

Interesting read. Any such comparison in a typical collector’s stable would be too subjective. I’m looking forward to saddle time on my Prestige-tubed Panasonic dx5000 to see for myself. Compared to my own SL and 531c builds, it’s the Peugeot PSN10 with Super Vitus tubes that blends it all together best for me.

georges1

The one in the link is fillet brazed.

jamesdak 

Well.....I've yet to encounter a Prestige bike I didn't love. My PDG Paramount and Davidson Impulse are both Prestige and I love them to bits, some of my favorite rides. I also have had both a Schwinn Prologue and a Schwinn Prologue TT made from Prestige, both awesome.

I've also had my fair share of SL bikes, a mix bag of like/dislike with more of them being bikes I just didn't connect with.

So for whatever reason I've never had a Prestige I didn't like but have had several SL that I did dislike.

I haven't had any rust issues with my Prestige tubed bikes to include the Impulse that quite obviously had sat out in the weather before I got it.

The Golden Boy 

The first time I read this article was shortly after I got my first Columbus framed bike- my 1984 Voyageur SP- with a SL/SP frame/fork. And it was over winter- It made me so excited to ride that bike and compare it to my 531 framed bikes.

The Voyageur has a very different geometry compared to my Trek tourers- so it immediately feels different- but after a mile or so, you completely forget about it.

Mr. 66

Now that you got me thinking, I do have a fully steel Prestige. The Serotta Colorado Prestige, much different than the Performance. Both are very tight feel, the Colorado tad stiffer, quicker on the correction. The prestige fork is much more compliant than the alloy, a lot more friendly to the wrist and elbows.

The White Serotta is a good combo of comfort and power transfer.

georges1

Glad to hear about that I haven't had a single Tange frame, mostly 4 Reynolds, 2 Dedacciai and 1 Columbus Genius.I have the (bad) tendancy to use rustol and apply it to any bike frame I buy in the seat tube bottom bracket, and steering tube.I think, it is more a matter of like some tubing series than not. I agree with you regarding the SL , for me it is a midrange quality tube but nothing that screams high end.

xiaoman1 

Calling on any facilitators with a "Time Machine".
Best, Ben

chain_whipped

Concur about frame and fork built with Super Vitus 980. But I prefer a slight smaller downsize than typically ride, and mated with a quality tubular wheelset / tires.

chain_whipped

Many 80-90's era upper end MTB were built with Prestige. No argument on its greatness but I'm thinking there were other reasons. The Shimano connection, cost advantage, availability, consistency in quality.

79pmooney

A data smudge to toss in here. I raced a '76 Fuji Pro of quality tubing. (It probably was stickered but my head injury obliterated much of the summer before and though I raced it next seasonr, my priorities were not on the bike.) It was a great ride. Stiff enough as a 59cm for this relatively smooth long and not powerful climber. High BB, very quick steering that was sweet at super fast speeds. (Vermont hills.) A always wanted to recreate that ride minus the super quick steering and 11" high! BB.

Last summer - the bike! Fellow forumite had a Pro Miyata up for sale. The same size. A pure race bike. No-name Miyata brand tubing. Bought it. Set it up Cyclone Ds and brakes, Chorus triple I had, 155 stem (I've got arms!). Rode it.

Wow! One hundred percent pure race. Absolutely perfect, quick, secure steering, all the stiffness I ever would have needed as a 24 yo racer in top 0.1% conditioning. Considerably stiffer than that Fuji. And it just wants to go! Pure joy to ride. (But taxing, Making myself go slow to wmy body's abilities doesn't always happen.)

On seeing various write-ups of Miyata, I've learned they had in-house steel facilities, could and did make high quality cro-molys. (Bike's stickered with Cro-Mo on seat and fork. Seatstays are ovalized to semi-aero and blades are also narrower than standard. I cannot feel any loss of stiffness from the slight compromise of width.)

Where the Miyata's tubing ranks compared to SL or Prestige? No idea. (I did say this was a data smudge, not point. )

georges1

Probably was it made of Kaisei tubing ???

mhespenheide 

If I understand it correctly, Kaisei is a modern offshoot of Tange engineers going out on their own.

Miyata always used their own unique "house brand" of steel tubing, which they said they made in-house. "Spline Triple Butted", if I remember it right. It was typically thicker-gauge, which would match [MENTION=392125]79pmooney[/MENTION]'s observation.

bulgie 

I thought it was Ishiwata. Anyone have the straight poop? Maybe not so simple, like cross-pollenation between Tange and Ishi and/or others?

mhespenheide 

It looks like you're right:
The catalogs of Japanese vintage bicycle.

I thought I'd heard that Kaisei was a spinoff after Tange was sold and their engineers wanted to keep at it rather than move, but I must be mixing them up with Veloflex. Too many company histories to keep track of!

El Chaba

I know that there is much more to a great riding bike than the tube set, but a couple of my best riding bikes happen to be built from Columbus SL. I think that I can tell the difference between SL and SLX with the nod going to the SL. At least in my frame size, the wall thickness seems to just the right tradeoff between flexible and stiff. I am not surprised that the road testers picked the SL frame.

TiHabanero

Miyata did not always draw their own tubes, it was something they adopted in the late 70's-early 80's. They had used in the past Champion tubing as well as others I am sure. Timeline is not written in cement, however them not always drawing their own tubes is.

Drillium Dude 

It's kinda funny that Mr. Uhte - the one who suggested the blind test - resorted to the 'everyone I've talked to preferred the Tange tubeset' comment even after both test riders came to the conclusion they preferred what turned out to be the Columbus SL bike.

Begs the question: then what was the point (from Mr. Uhte's POV) of doing a blind test? The riders reported their findings based on feel (as I assume the riders Mr. Uhte referenced purporting to prefer Tange did as well). Mr. Schubert even claimed in the article that he was sure the pink bike was built from Prestige, and was surprised to learn it was not.

On a separate note, Bicycle Guide did a similar blind test in the mid-90s. In that exercise, Mondonico built a total of 7 frames, all painted metallic green and outfitted identically, of the various Columbus tubesets available at that time. The only frame the test riders recognized before even riding was the Max tubeset - kinda hard to miss! IIRC, the differences detected were minimal - and of course, there were triple-plus-one opportunities to be both impressed - or confused!

[MENTION=202349]SpeedofLite[/MENTION] Thanks for the article, it was an interesting read - and of course the pics of Bruce Gordon's immaculate work provided the proverbial icing on the cake.

DD

tendency

That may be true for road frames - a lack of Prestige built bikes after the early 90s - but not so for mountain bikes. Many of the finest steel mountain bikes did, and still do, use a Prestige variant.

steelbikeguy

Thanks to SpeedofLite for posting this!
It's always educational to look at some of our assumptions about the things we like or dislike, and it's a bit rare to get the opportunity to do so.

I was fully assuming that the thinner tubes would be the more comfortable, since I've had this sort of experience. The result that the SL frame was preferred surprised me, like many others. Re-reading the article, I noted that the fork blade thickness was the same for both tube sets... with no mention of steerer tube thickness. My assumption is that the fork blades and steerer tube provide much more ability to flex and attenuate vibration than the other tubes... mostly because the fork is just a big cantilevered beam that is allowed to pivot at the headset bearings (i.e. the steerer can flex, even though it is fixed in place at the headset bearings). With essentially identical forks, it would make sense that differences in comfort would be minimal, and other factors could influence the perceived comfort. Of course, I have no idea what other factors could account for the perceived difference... maybe pink is just an intrinsically comfortable color?

I did like the mention that a larger tire had a big effect on comfort too, something that has become common knowledge nowadays.


Steve in Peoria